Under the Rising Wave. How Disaggregated Revenue Sources Can Tell Another Story for Québec’s Top Income Share

Abstract

Top income investigations usually rely on types of earnings that remain at a tively aggregated level. Using a novel disaggregated dataset for Québec’s top earners, we map the recent evolution of different types of income for the top one percent. Hidden under the steady increase of the top income share, we find that there has been very divergent and sharp rises of different revenue sources at specific moments. When looking at disaggregated data, composition effects and historical counterfactuals in Québec invalidate market-based theories like globalization and skilled biased technical change, but not institution-based theories like financialization, taxation and union strength.